Bridge conventions, and which ones are worth learning first

What a convention is

Bidding is a language with about 35 words in it, and a rule that each word must be higher than the last. That's very little room to describe 13 cards.

A convention buys room by taking a bid that natural methods barely need and giving it a job.

Stayman is the clearest example. After partner opens 1NT, you almost never want a natural 2♣ meaning "I have clubs, let's play there".

So it's repurposed to ask a question you very often do want to ask: do you have a four-card major?

The first two: Stayman and transfers

Both attach to the 1NT opening, which comes up on roughly one deal in eight.

Both solve the same problem: a 1NT opener has a balanced hand that might contain a four- or five-card major, and an eight-card major fit scores better than notrump on most hands.

• Stayman : 2♣ asks opener for a four-card major. Use it when you hold a four-card major and enough for at least an invitation.
• Jacoby transfers : 2♦ tells opener to bid hearts, 2♥ tells them to bid spades. Use them with a five-card major. That way the strong hand ends up as declarer, so the opening lead comes round to it rather than through it.

Learn these two together. Between them they cover almost every hand facing a 1NT opening.

Then: surviving interference

The opponents often join the auction. Agreeing what your calls mean when they do is one of the easiest ways to improve.

• Negative doubles : after partner opens and an opponent overcalls, your double is for takeout rather than penalties. Learn this one early. Without it you have no way to show a four-card major at the two level.
• Takeout doubles : the standard way to compete on a good hand with no long suit. A double of an opening bid asks partner to bid, and promises support for whichever suit they choose.
• Cappelletti : a way into the auction after an opponent opens 1NT, where natural overcalls are risky and passing too often lets them play there.
• Michaels and the unusual notrump : two ways to show a 5-5 two-suiter in a single call, on hands where naming one suit loses the other.
• Lebensohl : for when an opponent overcalls partner's 1NT at the two level. It's advanced, and it handles hands that have no other good bid.

Then: describing a good hand accurately

These come up less often, but when they do the hand is usually worth a lot of points.

• Jacoby 2NT : a game-forcing raise of partner's major with four-card support, which leaves the whole three level free for opener to describe shortage and strength.
• Two over one game forcing : a whole system rather than a single convention, and the main alternative to Standard American. It gives you much more room to explore slam, at the cost of a more complicated 1NT response.
• Acol : the British system: four-card majors and a weak notrump. Worth reading if you play online, because you'll meet it.
• New minor forcing : finds the 5-3 major fit that a 1NT rebid would otherwise bury.
• Drury : lets a passed hand show a limit raise without pushing the auction past two of the major, which matters because third-seat openings are often light.
• Splinter bids : a double jump showing a game-forcing raise and a singleton. The companion to Jacoby 2NT: one shows your shortage, the other asks for partner's.
• Bergen raises : trump length before strength, so a nine-card fit reaches the three level at once.
• Reverses : more a shape the auction takes than a convention. Learn early which rebids force partner to the three level.
• Fourth suit forcing : with three suits bid, the fourth becomes a question. The sibling of new minor forcing, for when opener showed a second suit rather than rebidding notrump.
• Blackwood : 4NT asks for aces. Knowing partner has two aces doesn't tell you they're the two you need, and it can't ask about a void.

How many conventions should a partnership play?

Fewer than you might think. Every convention has costs:

1. You have to remember it, including late in a long session.
2. You give up the natural meaning. Playing negative doubles means you can't make a penalty double of a one-level overcall, and sometimes that's the call you want.
3. You have to agree the follow-ups. Stayman is one bid with about six sequences after it. A pair who agreed the bid but not the sequences will misread each other.

The practical rule: add one convention, play fifty hands with it, and only then add another.